Paul Hurst Pre Southend United

Shrewsbury Town boss Paul Hurst will be guarding against complacency when Town take on Southend on Tuesday night.

Hurst’s side went to the top of League One with a 1-0 win over Wigan Athletic on Saturday and now take on Southend who sit 17th in the league.

However, Hurst was clear to point out that the difference in league position means nothing and he expects the players to be 100% at it.

“Ultimately it’s up to the players’ mentality”, Paul told ShrewsWeb.

“I’m not trying to scare them when I say that Southend probably should have got something at Charlton, but words are words and actions speak louder, and tomorrow night they’ve got to put that into practice.

“If they’re not confident now then I’m not sure they ever will be, so from that point of view they should be in a good place, but Saturday’s gone and we are onto the next one.

“If we have a heavy defeat at home tomorrow night then that is what we are talking about, not beating Wigan. From that point of view we can only effect the future and the next one is Southend.”

Southend haven’t had the start they were hoping for after finishing just a point outside the play-offs last season, but Paul is wary of their threats.

“I think Phil (Brown) said himself that they’ve got players that aren’t quite doing it at the minute, but the reason he thinks they can get in the top six is because he knows they’ve got some good players there”, Hurst said.

“I think a strength of them from my point of view is that they have been together for a little while as a group and they have just added a couple of bits of quality.

“They have had some injuries, which has been a factor, but that’s where you need a little bit of luck along the way and at the minute they haven’t had that.

“He knows it’s a long hard season. He’s not writing off their chances because they haven’t quite got the points they want after six games, in the same way that I’m not going to get carried away with the fact that we’ve accumulated a good number of points in these first few games.”

With Town currently top of the league thre is a good feel about the place, but Hurst won’t let the players get ahead of themselves.

“If I feel that we getting over confident then I will make sure that I let them know about that”, said Paul.

“No one came in any louder than usual or anything like that. One group this morning in the boxes were a little bit quite if anything, so I don’t think anyone’s getting carried away with it.

“If we get wind that they are then we will have a quiet word, calm that down and make sure it doesn’t happen.

“We know that there’s a lot more hard work to come, 40 games still to get through and naturally there will be some worse times than what we are currently having.”